Maleae


The Maleae are the apple tribe in the rose family, Rosaceae. The group includes a number of plants bearing commercially important fruits, such as apples and pears, while others are cultivated as ornamentals. Older taxonomies separated some of this group as tribe Crataegeae, as the Cydonia group, or some genera were placed in family Quillajaceae.
The tribe consists exclusively of shrubs and small trees. Most have pomes, a type of accessory fruit that does not occur in other Rosaceae. All except Vauquelinia have a basal haploid chromosome count of 17, instead of 7, 8, or 9 as in the other Rosaceae.
There are approximately 28 genera that contain about 1100 species worldwide, with most species occurring in the temperate Northern Hemisphere.

Nomenclature

The name Maleae is required by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, for any group at the tribal level that includes the genus Malus, but not either of the genera Rosa or Amygdalus.

Current classification

Core members of the group

A traditional circumscription of Maleae includes the following genera:
intergeneric hybrids:
and graft hybrids:
+Pyrocydonia

Tribe Crataegeae

A recent taxonomic treatment includes the following genera in Maleae that were earlier separated as tribe Crataegeae :
intergeneric hybrids:
and the graft hybrid:
The following genera were previously placed in tribe Quillajaceae in Rosaceae, or in family Quillajaceae. Their fruit are dry capsules, not pomes.
The Cydonia group within the Maloid Rosaceae was a tentative grouping of pome-fruited genera with many ovules per carpel. The genera involved were:
It is not yet clear whether this group is monophyletic within the Maleae. Molecular data indicate a close relationship between Cydonia and Pseudocydonia. Multiple ovules per carpel also occur in Kageneckia, a non-pome-bearing genus. Chloroplast DNA analysis, but not nuclear DNA, shows a tight relationship between Cydonia and Dichotomanthes, a non-pome-bearing genus.